http://www.zeit.de/online/2008/27/metro
This seems almost too good to be true!
(This article was also reported at Ain't It Cool News, which is how it got to me:
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/3732
PS Dibs on Robot Maria costume!!!!
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laughingmagpie- laughingmagpie
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I've been wanting to do Robot Maria since I first read about Metropolis, which was probably before you were born, so I think I have the dibs, actually. ;P
ETA: though I actually do believe in modern composers trying their hands at scoring Silents, keeping it current and alive. I just think the original score needs to be kept up and available too so that we can truly see the film the way "it was meant to be seen" and heard.
Edited at 2008-07-03 05:04 pm (UTC)
I know first hand, thanks to you, what a difference a proper performance and score has on a silent picture.
"Silent" is a complete misnomer given after the invasion of Talkies. There might not be dialog but silent films were not silent, and Metropolis was no exception. Seeing a Silent the way it was meant to be experienced, with live music, is a revelation of how music can manipulate and add layers to a visual experience that modern movies are weak echoes of.
Metropolis has an original score composed by Gottfried Huppertz and is meant to be heard with a live big orchestra. That's not the score used by Moroder, which I've never heard but sounds like it would be horrid.
:-) If you make the Robot, then I will be the nightclub Maria:
http://www.zetaminor.com/images/dvd_rev
The only version one can see currently, of course, has Moroder attached to it, and it's the most awful thing...... :(
The version of Metropolis that TCM shows is, I think, a restored version from 2002. It has the original score and I've taped it if you'd like to see it. There are a variety of Metropolis versions out there, including some for sale on Amazon and the like: some with better visuals and/or more scenes intact, some with more realistic frames per second (many Silents suffer from being played back at the wrong speed - the action is not as comically stuttering as some modern versions led us to believe), some with better scores. I hope this discovery provides an opportunity to do this up right, and maybe choose between scores, German (original) intertitles, etc when watching it.
Also, random bit--I saw this and thought of you. It's from the filming of 'Public Enemies.' :)
*flails excitedly*
I'm a wee bit excited about the "Public Enemies" movie in the works about Dillinger!! Who knows, it might be rotten, but it's starting out with a splendid cast!
Johnny.
JOHNNY.
It's probably going to be too violent for my liking *sigh* but I do plan to see it anyway.
Who knows how many other cinematic treasures are gathering dust in vaults across the world, waiting to be discovered. I hope the same discovery will be made regarding missing scenes from various Orson Welles movies.
The only ones who did were in Germany (I think Berlin) when it was first released in the 1920s, and their copies were lost. The version they sent to the States was heavily edited to make it shorter and less complex - so all the versions they had came from this cut one, and over the years their copies got even shorter with film loss or local edits. At least, that was the story as it stood for a long time, then it turns out that this guy in Argentina at the beginning asked especially for the original film, and it has been kicking around Buenos Aries since then - so, unless you saw it at a film festival in Buenos Aires, you haven't seen the complete movie :-). Weird thing, actually, that there were people in Argentina watching the complete version and they didn't twig to what they had til now.
Edited at 2008-07-06 03:45 pm (UTC)